From the early stages of Zionism to the present, Zionists have propagated the myth that the most important land-bridge in human history (Palestine) has been empty and destitute for two thousand year until it was later developed by the Israeli Jews.
To facilitate such disinformation, the Zionists adopted the following slogan to entice European
Jewry to emigrate to Palestine:

"A land with no people is for a people
with no land".

Had the Zionist leadership admitted the existence of an indigenous
people, then they
would have been obliged to explain how they intended to displace them. To
disprove this baseless myth, let's quote Ben-Gurion
(the first Israeli Prime Minister) who stated as early as 1918 that "Palestine is not an empty
country". According
to Shabtai Teveth (one of Ben-Gurion's official biographers), Ben-Gurion
stated in an article published in 1918 that:

"Palestine is not an empty country . . . on no
account must we injure the rights of the inhabitants."

Ben-Gurion
often
returned to this point, emphasizing that Palestinian Arabs had "the full
right" to an independent economic, cultural, and communal life, but not
political. (Shabtai Teveth, p.
37-38)

To destroy this baseless myth, click
here to view a page that was scanned from a book which was conceived and
edited by Ben-Gurion himself, stating that Jews made up 12% of the total Palestinian
population as of 1914. It's not only that the majority of the Jews in Palestine
were not Zionists (by Ben-Gurion's own admission), but they were also not even
citizens of the country since many had recently fled anti-Semitic Tsarist Russia.

As the Ottoman census records show Palestine was widely inhabited in the late 19th and early 20th century, especially in the
rural areas where agriculture was the main profession. According to Justine
McCarthy (p. 26), an
authority on the Ottoman Turks, Palestine's population in the early 19th
century was 350,000, and in 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000
Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and
59,000 Jews (including many European Jews from the first and second Aliyah).

So the Jewish population in Palestine as of 1914 were under 8% of the total
population, which was much smaller than the Palestinian Christian Arab population. It should be noted that our source, Justine
McCarthy was quoted by many Israeli Jewish scholars
like Benny
Morris and Tom
Segev. In that regard, it's worth quoting one of the most ardent Zionists, Israel Zangwill,
who stated as early as 1905, that Palestine was twice as thickly populated as the
United States. He stated:

"Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem
is already twice as thickly populated as the United States, having fifty-two
souls to the square mile, and not 25% of them Jews ..... [We] must be prepared
either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our
forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly
Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us." (Righteous Victims,
p. 140 & Expulsion Of The
Palestinians, p. 7-10)

In other words, Palestinians were recognized by the Zionist leadership as
"humans" who populated Palestine, however, that was not good enough of a reason
to "grant" them the same political rights as Jews, who mostly lived outside of
Palestine. Consequently, this ideology was the prelude to the wholesale DISPOSSESSION
and ETHNIC
CLEANSING of the Palestinian people during the 1948 war.

Soon after the first Zionist Congress in Basel (Switzerland) in 1897, a Zionist
delegation was sent to Palestine for a fact finding mission, and to explore the
viability of settling Palestine with persecuted European Jews. The delegation replied back
from Palestine with a cable that stated:

"The bride is beautiful, but she is married to
another man."(Iron
Wall, p. 3)

Despite that many Zionists were aware of this happy marriage as early as 1897, they have
deliberately chosen to terminate this
relationship since they think that Jewish rights are more important than
Palestinian rights.
The
forcible divorce of Palestine from its indigenous people was eloquently
articulated by Ze'ev
Jabotinsky, the founder of the Israeli political Right, in 1926 who
explained that:

" ... the tragedy lies in the fact the there is a collision here
between two truths .... but our justice is greater. The Arab is culturally
backward, but his instinctive patriotism is just as pure and noble as our own;
it cannot be bought, it can only be curbed ... force majeure."(Righteous
Victims, p. 108)

The questions which beg to be asked are these:

Do two wrongs make a right?

Is it just to solve an injustice by perpetrating another injustice?

If at one point, Palestinian injustice becomes greater than Jewish
injustice, does that justify perpetrating war crimes to solve their
injustice?

What makes many Zionists dangerous over time is that they start believing their
own propaganda. For example, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister between
1996-1998,
proposed lately that Israel should never relinquish control over the occupied West Bank
and Gaza Strip since he claims that the local population are the descendents
of non-indigenous Palestinians. He also alleged that these people came to look
for employment that was generated by the influx of new European Jewish
capital. Yehoshua Porat, a Hebrew University professor, refuted the
late Prime Minister in an article published in Ha'aretz Daily, click
here to read his rebuttal. It's worth noting that Professor Porat worked for
the campaign to elect Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, so it might not be a good idea
to call him Netanyahu
hater. Moreover, it should be noted that all Zionist investments in Palestine
required employing Jewish labor as decreed by the Jewish National Fund's racist
bylaws (United
Nations: The origins of the Palestine problem). In other words, the primary beneficiary
of Zionist investment were Jewish immigrants, and not the Palestinian native
population.

It's really amusing that while nearly all Israelis and
Zionists believe that Hawaii, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Tahiti, and Iraq were all
populated by indigenous people prior to WW I, however, they find it
extremely difficult to imagine that the "Promised Land" (one of the
most strategic areas in the world) had any indigenous people whatsoever.
It's as if the "Promised Land" had been waiting for over 2,000 years for
Israelis and Zionists to settle it and make it bloom, click
here to read our response to this argument.

Finally, it's not only that Palestine enjoyed a strategic commercial location
(being the land bridge between Asia and Africa), its lands were also fertile
and planted with all sorts of trees a long time before the
Zionists came to its shorelines. So to claim that Palestine had no people
until the Zionists came to settle it, is an absurd claim. Sadly, many Israelis
and Zionists hate the idea of an indigenous Palestinian people to the point
that they've created a fictitious world based on illusion. In that respect, the
Palestinian people have a simple message: Over 8.5 million
Palestinians are not going away. The sooner the Israelis and
Zionists understand this simple message, the faster they will wake up from
their delusional coma.

At the page 21 of the british survey of palestine there were 757000 inhabitants in palestine, and the 78% were muslims, so it mean 590000. How many of them lived then at today israeli side of the green line? A half? so how can zionists expell 26 years after 750000 arabs and left enough arabs in israel that today became 1.7 millons of arab israelies? Your numbers are not very confidents

Israel(with US backing) is strongly guilty of one thing: Worse treatment by blockade of Gaza Strip and West Bank than holocaust itself. GS/WB have no economies and the world looks on as they remain impoverished and won't even be allowed building materials(these will help terrorists they say). Every aggression by Israel is "self defense"...minor attacks by disenchanted youths in GS "terrorism" to be repaid by communal punishment-Air raids and mass murder.

The atheist Theodor Herzl (of Pest, Hungary) again held his "First Zionist Congress" in the city of Basel (Basle), Switzerland from August 29th to August 31st in the year 1897 CE. An interesting side point, the atheist Herzl was actually planning to hold this first Zionist meeting in Germany, but Herzl and company were forced to switch from Germany to Switzerland due to unrelenting pressure and opposition to Herzl and the Zionists from German Orthodox and Conservative Jews who hated the secular/atheistic Zionists!

Ashkenazi Jews are primarily the descendants of Slavo-Turkic Khazars from the Caucasus region who converted to the religion of Judaism starting in the 8th century CE. Johns Hopkins University geneticist Dr. Eran Elhaik "The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses".

January 17, 2013 AFP: "Gene study settles debate over origin of European Jews"

"Jews of European origin are a mix of ancestries, with many hailing from tribes in the Caucasus who converted to Judaism and created an empire that lasted half a millennium, according to a gene study.

The investigation, its author says, should settle a debate that has been roiling for more than two centuries.

Jews of European descent, often called Ashkenazis, account for some 90 percent of the more than 13 million Jews in the world today." Dr. Eran Elhaik again just proved the Ashkenazi Jews are Khazars!

Palestinians are the indigenous people of the land of Palestine as Professor Alan Dowty of Notre Dame University notes; "Palestinians are the descendants of all the indigenous peoples who lived in Palestine over the centuries; since the seventh century, they have been predominantly Muslim in religion and almost completely Arab in language and culture."

As for modern nationalisms they are ALL recent historical constructs, as the very word "nationalism" did not even exist until it was created by 18th century CE German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder in the 1770s CE (most of human history has been various empires, feudal monarchs, etc. etc.). Most scholars say Johann Gottfried Herder's neologism (aka new word) nationalismus (in German, which became nationalism in the English language) is first applicable to the "ultra-nationalist party in France" during the French Revolution of 1789 CE to 1799 CE. With this background info in mind, one needs to only view two different relevant dates on the issue of Palestine vs. European Khazar Zionist colonialism.

Scholars such as Baruch Kimmerling pointed to the 1834 CE Arab Revolt in Palestine against the Egypt Eyalet (aka the Muhammad Ali Pasha dynasty based out of Egypt) as the key factor in the start of modern Palestinian nationalism. "Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal argue that the 1834 Arab revolt of the Egyptian conquered part of Ottoman Syria was a formative event for the Palestinian sense of nationhood"

1834 CE comes BEFORE the definitive starting point date of the modern colonialist European Zionist movement. That is the "First Zionist Congress" that Austro-Hungarian journalist (from PEST, Hungary to be specific) atheist Theodor Herzl held in Switzerland in August of 1897 (which easy math tell us is 63 years after the first date I gave regarding Palestinian nationalism!)

"Everyman", most Palestinian Arabs are simply the indigenous prehistoric people (check out Dr. Ariella Oppenheim, etc) who were culturally and linguistically Arabized (process called Arabization). Palestine was not settled in mass by supposed settlers from the Arabian Peninsula or something in the 7th century CE! And all real academics and scholars on the topic would confirm that.

Everyman, what is wrong with you? Palestinians were christians and samarites before we converted to islam and before christianity we were pagans, som adopted judaism. Do you think ethnicity and relugion are the same thing? Go read a book, enough of your propaganda. Its boring.

Everyman: Just because something has happened before does not mean it should be allowed to happen again. There is no reason why the Palestinians should be forced out of their homes, let alone that this has happened before or that their ancestors may or may not have done the same thing. Crime is not in the blood, and justice is not in the blood spilled.

Everyone knows there were no Muslims in "Palestine" before 622 CE because - there was no such thing as Islam. But there were indigenous people living in the region we call Palestine. How did the current "Palestinians" take over this region? They conquered it. And they mixed with the indigenous people, basically "stole" their culture, destroyed and murdered those who stood in their way, and are now considered the "indigenous" people of the region. And Americans did the same, as did the Spanish in Mexico, Central America, and South America, the Arabs in all of the middle east (Egyptians now aren't even ethnically related to the people from ancient Egypt), and so forth. What Zionists did is what all people have been doing from the beginning: conquer a land, displace the indigenous people, and call the land your own. The only difference is that the Zionists have done it in more recent time and the Zionists are Jewish and have been one of the most victimized peoples in world history, by both Christians and Muslims. Does this make everything the Zionists did right? NO. Does it make Zionists any worse than Arabs, Christians, Chinese (see Tibet), Indonesians, Portuguese, and on and on and on? NO. So why the uproar about Zionists? Is it Anti-Semitism? Possibly. Is it Arab oil? Possibly. Is it Arab propaganda, linked to considerable latent Christian Anti-Semitism? Possibly. Is it because Arabs and Palestinians are morally right and Zionists morally wrong? Hardly. Look in the historical mirror at each of your cultures and you'll find the same ugly face staring back. Before you judge others, take a good, hard look at yourself.

"F Callen" your an imperialist, neo-colonialist supporting idiot. The invading Zionist colonialist thieves from Europe stole agriculture companies (along with the land) from the indigenous Palestinians. Among these including the indigenous Palestinian owned Jaffa Orange Co. that exported Palestinian citrus produce all over Europe (including England, France, Italy, and Malta). Then as for your pathetic claim "also compare the GDPs", you sound much like imperialist fools that speak of Amerikkka's large "GDP" that comes from its history of imperialism, genocide, theft, and slavery (using African slaves to build the US on stolen Native American land). Western countries have "higher" GDP's because they are wealthy from all their colonialist/imperialist plundering and theft, and the Zionists themselves were and are invading colonialist/imperialist forces from mostly America and Europe.

Gather one thousand Palestinians
and then analyze them.
Equally bring one thousand Israelis
and do the same.
You shall notice that the Palestinians are one people
while the Israelis are made out of many.

The Palestinians have one language (and even the same dialect)
while Israelis speak with their own grand-parents
and speak , one artificial-reinvented-language, among each other .

The same goes for the food .....
while Palestinians have one and the same kitchen,
the Israelis have 20 different ones and if Israelis
have in common some few dishes ,
they are the ones stolen from the Palestinians like:
Falafel , Hoummos ,Baba-Ghanouj, Shawarma
or the stuffed-wine-leaves.

Basically the comparison is simple :
on one side you have : the indigenous , the pure, the real
and on the other side : the invader, the fake , the impostors.

What do we learn from the above ?? :
the pure and the genuine must have all the rights
(and all the priorities) when it comes into a conflict with "the fake".

Unfortunately ,
Wall-Street, the Pentagon and the White-house
all want to make out the fake as being the real
and the real as being non existent !!!

joaquim.df@gmail.com
Nor Jewish or Palestinian where a Nation. To be a nation is not essential any way. Maybe in the mind of few bourgeois people in the end of the 19 century they where a Jewish or Palestinian nation. But is does not change anything. Arabic people, farmers, workers, intellectuals, where working on this land, Bilad el Sham. Even if they did not call themselves Palestinian people in any occasion . The Zionist movement is a colonial movement that has no legitimacy to took this land what ever was the name of it. Now the name is Palestine, and it includes the Palestinian Mandate where the Zionist movement destroyed the land, the culture, the work of the indigenous people from 1900 till now. Now the Palestinian feeling and nation is real and legitimate.

The famous
Austrian Jew, father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, rejected Zionism
because it has within it the same seeds of human frailty that he could
easily comprehend. To wit, Freud wrote once to a Zionist who tried to
recruit him:

"I cannot do as you wish. I am unable to overcome my aversion to burdening
the public with my name, and even the present critical time does not seem to
me to warrant it. Whoever wants to influence the masses must give them
something rousing and inflammatory and my sober judgment of Zionism does not
permit this. I certainly sympathize with its goals, am proud of our
University in Jerusalem and am delighted with our settlement’s prosperity.
But, on the other hand, I do not think that Palestine could ever become a
Jewish state, nor that the Christian and Islamic worlds would ever be
prepared to have their holy places under Jewish care. It would have seemed
more sensible to me to establish a Jewish homeland on a less
historically-burdened land. But I know that such a rational viewpoint would
never have gained the enthusiasm of the masses and the financial support of
the wealthy. I concede with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our
people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can
raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece
of a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of
the natives. Now judge for yourself whether I, with such a critical point of
view, am the right person to come forward as the solace of a people deluded
by unjustified hope."

The Zionist goal of creating a ‘Jewish State’ with a ‘Jewish Majority’ in Palestine implied getting rid of its people and stealing their homes and lands.
To achieve this goal, the Zionists launched a number of wars and committed dozens of Massacres, starting with the massacre in Baldat al-Shaikh in December 1947.

Ever since, Zionist ethnic cleansing and land theft never stopped. Eviction of Palestinian Arabs from their homes in East Jerusalem and the order to expel thousands of Palestinian Arabs from the West Bank provide the latest examples in this regard.

Inspite of all Zionist crimes and efforts, millions of Palestinian Arabs are still living within the boundaries of Mandate Palestine. According to the latest figures of the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of Jews residing in Palestine is 5,726,000. The total number of Palestinian Arabs living within the boundaries of Mandate Palestine is over 5.5 million. Accordingly, sixty-two years of Zionist efforts to cleanse Palestine of its Arabs came to naught.

The latest massacre committed against the Flotilla while the whole world is watching will put an end to the Zionist criminal acts.

What happened to the Flotilla would put an end to the Zionist criminality and opens the road to a road leading to a state within which both Arabs and Jews could live side by side as equal people with equal rights.

The article (the one published by the Foreign Policy Research institute in the comment below, not the one above, which is excellent), is misleading, whether deliberately or not.

First of all, 'a few hundred thousand people' as a figure for the population in the late 1800's would make one perhaps think of 200000 or 300000. All estimates show at a minimum a population of more than half a million to 600 000. Again this must be put into the context of the size of the land, which the article above explains - population density was very high,and this was before the general population boom worldwide.

The idea that the Palestinians did not see themselves as 'Palestinians' is also misleading. Amongst the educated elite there was a concept of living in 'Palestine' and thus being 'Palestinians' since the 17th century (see Haim Gerbert, 'Palestine and other territorial concepts in the 17th Century), even if they did not see themselves as a 'nation' or perceive that identification as important (remember, nationalism itself was developed in the very late 18th Century, it is not a 'natural' frame of mind that existed since time immemorial) - however there WAS a distinct set of customs, dialect, and society developing in the area, due to geographical boundaries (the Litani, Jordan, Negev, Mediterranean), and the family/clannish connections that interwebbed the territory and were limited to it due to the above boundaries. The connections between the people in the area, can be seen when the Ottomans reformed their administrative system in the mid 19th C, and moved the sanjaks of Nablus and Acre into the eylaiet of Beirut (before they had all been part of a Greater Syrian district) - there was a large and violent protest movement in the Nablus sanjak, because of a desire to stay connected to Jerusalem. similarly, differentiation from other territories occured further after the Crimean war, when Haifa became an alternative port to Beirut, and as an economic centre, it was linked to the other major cities of Palestine. By the end of the 19th Century though, which is the period the article talks about, nationalism HAD entered Palestine as well - and though not a huge movement, at least in the urban areas and the young and the educated, the concept of a distinct Palestinian identity WAS taking shape. Though it was not a huge movement, it is wrong to say that Palestinian nationalism begun only as a response to Zionism. Had Palestine become part of a Greater Syrian state, as was the intention after WWI with Faisal's kingdom, perhaps that would have been subversed by the development of a wider Syrian identity. That we will never know.
It is also misleading to say that much of the land was barren. Palestine was dotted with villages and habitations through its entire landmass by the late 1800s. Especially after the Crimean war, and the spur of economic growth that brought (though note not always for the benefit of the peasantry) much of the land was cultivated. Was there land that was not cultivated? Yes. Name me a single country where there isn't.

But the whole article misses the point. The answer to the question of whether there was a Palestinian 'nation' before Zionism, isn't an argument that 'Yes there was', its 'Who cares!' Zionism would still be wrong if the 'Jewish nation' (a completely artificial notion that developed in the early 19th C as well) was the most 'true' nation in the world, and the 'Palestinian nation' the most 'false' nation in the world. States exist to serve the native indigenous peoples of the lands in which they are set, regardless of their ethnicity or religion, and not descriminating because of it. There were HUMAN BEINGS living in the land of Palestine, and they deserved to have their rights respected 100% -whether they understood European ideological notions that had been developed in the 19th Century is meaningless. The problem is that the Zionist is a racist and a follower of ethnic-nationalism, so he only gets to think in racial terms- for the Zionist, the state exists to be a 'nation-state' devoted exclusively to one ethnicity and one 'nation'. The Jewish state is for the Zionist there for all memebers of the Jewish nation, a world-wide collective that is defined along racial and religious lines. An American who has never suffered, witnessed persecution, seen any pogroms or holocausts, has his rights guaranteed by his government 100%, is somehow entitled to priviledged treatment by the Jewish state (most importantly, he can get citizenship no questions asked), just because of his racial identification - a person who has suffered all his life, who even had to suffer in a Nazi concentration camp, but is NOT a Jew, gets nothing. The unit of reference is always the race - and THAT is the problem with nationalism. In that it grants privileges to individuals along such lines it is racist. Arguing about the Palestinians being 'a nation' or not, simply falls into the trap of validating the mindframe that believes that being a self-identified 'nation' actually matters as to the treatment you receive from your state, and what kind of governments are set up in the various lands around the world. Are we to take every group of people who self-identifies themselves as a nation, and curve up completely unconnected lands for them around the world, and give them to them, the wishes of the natives be damned? With that logic, let the Palestinians get New York as their state. After all there is no such thing as a 'New York' nation, they're all Americans, and they can 'fulfill their national aspirations', in the rest of the US. There will be 49 American states, does the world need another one? Now find me a single American who will agree to that logic. But when its used by Zionists, its somehow all right...

What do you think of this, as published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia?

Lord Shaftesbury called Israel ؟a land without a people for a people without a land.؟ This highlights the source of the problem that has troubled relations between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East for a hundred years. In the late 1800s, the land in question was indeed a ؟land without a people,؟ in the sense that the people living there did not think of themselves as a ؟nation.؟ But, it was not a land without people. While much of the land was barren, there were a few hundred thousand people living there, most of them Muslim Arabs, who began to be concerned about the influx of Jews. The Arabs living there did not, however, call themselves ؟Palestinians.؟ That is because in the late 1800s, there was no sovereign entity known as Palestine. (In ancient times, it was a Roman province.) The whole region, along with much of the Middle East, belonged to the Ottoman Turkish Empire, and Palestine did not even exist as a specific entity within the empire; nor had there ever been a sovereign entity known as Palestine. The area that today is called ؟historic Palestine؟ was at the time of Ottoman rule subdivided into different districts within the empire, reporting to different governors. If there was no Palestine, then there were no Palestinians. Indeed, if you asked the average person living there at the time to identify themselves, they may have identified themselves as members of a family or clan, as Muslims, possibly as Syrians (since ؟historic Palestine؟ was considered by many to be part of southern Syria, which itself was not an independent entity at the time), or they would have identified as Arabs or as subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The Palestinians didn؟t become a self-identifying people until later, perhaps around 1920 (or even much later), and that was largely in response to Zionism. One could say that had there been no Zionism, there likely would have been no ؟Palestinianism.؟ (Research the difference between an Arab, a Kurd, a Berber, and a Persian--all Muslims who live in the Middle East--and find out which states are associated with which of these peoples today, and which ؟nation؟ has no state. Also, define Pan-Arabism, and find out the years in which it appeared to thrive. )

Part 1
If you give credance to the Bible story in Genesis:
1. It was already called the land of Canaan before Abram arrived Gen 11:21, 12:5
2. The people who lived their were Canaanites a sub group of the Phoenician culture which was largely destroyed by the explosion of Santorini.
3. Abram claims that his God appeared to him and promised to give the land of Canaan to his seed.
Gen 12:7, 17:2
4. Who are Abram؟s seed? Eight Sons
By Hagar, first born, Ishmael, who married a Canaanite wife, was blessed by God to be a great nation. Gen 17:20
By Sarah, 2nd born, Isaac who married a Chaldian wife, Rebekah.
By Keturah, Zimran,, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Gen 25:1.
5. All these sons lived in the Land of Canaan and took wives from the existing local inhabitants, except for Isaac who sent for a wife from Ur of the Chaldees. (now Iraq).
6. Isaac؟s first son Esau, also lived and married in the land.
7. Jacob went back to Iraq and eventually married 4 Chaldian wives by which he had twelve sons.
8. Jacob returned to Canaan and all of his sons married local women, except Joseph who married an Egyptian woman, the daughter of an Egyptian priest.
9. When Jacob moved to Egypt, the family including servants numbered 70.(Gen 46:27) Therefore, in order to reach the numbers which later left Egypt, most of the Israelites intermarried with the local people in Egypt. 40,000 fighting men which meant that there must have been several hundred thousand including women and children. Josh 4:13 So now when Joshua came storming out of the desert with his hordes 400 years later, who did he murder? His own kin folk. No different than when the Khazarian Zionists, who were not necessarily Israelis, took over Palestine in 1948.